Consultant burns and plastic surgeon Andy Williams (left) said the girls are 'well' and are recovering with their families and a picture released by Kirtie Trup's family (right) showing devastating injuries

The burning caused severe injuries
which are likely to need multiple operations. Both girls are expected to
spend several more days at the burns unit at Chelsea and Westminster
Hospital.

Friends in
Zanzibar City, where the girls had been teaching, have said that the
pair received unwanted attention from young men in the days before the
attack.

Katie Gee was comforted by a fellow traveller as she was driven to hospital in Tanzania

The teenage volunteer appears to be in pain as she is taken to hospital alongside a male friend

Home: Kirstie Trup, 18, lives on this road in affluent Hampstead, north London

One nearby resident, named only as Abdul because of the fear of reprisals, said the young men were angered at being rebuffed.

HATE PREACHER HELD

Two
suspects have been arrested on Zanzibar in connection with the acid
attack as a hate preacher who went on the run after being shot by police
was apprehended on the mainland.

Extremist cleric Sheikh Issa Ponda
Issa has links to radical Islamist group Uamsho which police believe may
be involved in the assault.

Acid attacks have become the
hallmark of the group which wants Zanzibar’s independence from Tanzania
and Sharia law on the island.

Sheikh Ponda was shot by police as
they tried to arrest him but escaped, bleeding profusely.

He later
surrendered and was being treated in hospital last night.

Witnesses said
police surrounded him in Morogoro, 200 miles from Dar es Salaam, but
were pelted with stones by his followers.

Officers were seen shooting into
the air as a warning and it is believed Sheikh Ponda was hit in the
shoulder by a tear-gas canister.

He visited Zanzibar in the weeks
leading up to the attack on Katie Gee and Kirstie Trup and was seen
encouraging his supporters to protest against ‘colonisation’ from
Christians and inciting Muslim youths to violence.

The two suspects under arrest are among eight people brought in for questioning by police.

He
said: ‘There were a lot of girls staying in the house. Sometimes boys
come over. They make so many comments to the girls. They want to go
abroad. But the girls told them to go away.’

Katie
and Kirstie, who are both from Jewish families in affluent Hampstead,
north west London, are members of The Abstinence Club, a group of 100
London teenagers who promote celibacy as ‘the only reliable form of
contraception’.

They also knew to dress appropriately for the mainly Muslim island’s cultural traditions, according to Katie’s mother Nicky Gee.

Surgeon Mohammed Jidawi, who treated
the girls immediately after the attack, said Katie, who received the
worse injuries, has burns to 80 per cent of her right arm and 50 per
cent of her torso.

Medical student Olivia Moore, a friend of the girls, said she thought it had been a targeted attack.

She
told Channel 4 from Zanzibar: ‘The two men were on a moped and they
went past a group of tourists and then stopped for the girls.

'The two men then looked at each
other, they nodded, and then the man on the back of the bike smiled and
threw acid on the girls. There was no incident that preceded the actual
attack.’

Threats of acid attacks are not
uncommon on the island. Tourists rebuffing touts offering cheap goods
are often told: ‘For 500 shillings I can destroy your face.’

Members
of both families spent the weekend with the girls. A hospital spokesman
said: ‘They are still comfortable and in a stable condition. Doctors
are continuing to assess treatment options.’

Kirstie’s father Marc Trup, a property investor, said both girls were ‘struggling to come to terms’ with their burns.